


carnicería

by creepbat



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Cheating, Dissociation, F/M, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-11
Updated: 2014-12-11
Packaged: 2018-03-01 00:19:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2752535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creepbat/pseuds/creepbat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>She isn't his usual type, mostly because she isn't an exotic dancer named Chastity.</i>
</p>
<p>Post-Ozymandias</p>
            </blockquote>





	carnicería

She asks him to meet her at a Lotaburger off I-65.

When he'd heard his cell vibrate he snapped it open, thinking it was about damn time Huell finally returned his calls. Saul's left so many increasingly frantic messages on his bodyguard's voicemail that he'd be surprised if the phone hasn't already spontaneously combusted. But instead it's another call he admits he should have seen coming: Mrs. Heisenberg, and she just wants to talk.

The sun's going down as he pulls into the parking lot. Saul doesn't think he's eaten at one of these places since he was a little kid; he must've been because he can remember losing a tooth. On the way home he realized he'd dropped his future quarter somewhere in the restaurant, and his old man swatted him when he wouldn't stop whining about driving back to look for it.

Saul likes to believe his negotiation tactics have improved since then.

He goes in and buys two dollar menu cheeseburgers before joining Skyler at one of the outdoor tables. She doesn't touch hers, but on second thought he can't imagine she has much of an appetite these days. The nondescript location is just that, somewhere they don't expect to run into any familiar faces.

She isn't his usual type, mostly because she isn't an exotic dancer named Chastity. It wasn't long though after she first stepped into his office that Skyler White became the unwitting subject of some pretty colorful fantasies. Saul doesn't know what he was thinking. It's always dicey tiptoeing through the minefield that is adultery, but screwing around with Walter _White's_ wife? Might as well save some time and stick his johnson in a bear trap. All for some dirty damp and deep, and his own words send up a rare flicker of shame that he expertly suppresses.

The temperature's fallen a little, and Skyler wraps her sweater tighter around herself. "You made sure no one followed you, right?"

_Does a bear shit in the woods?_ But she looks wan today, depleted, so he only nods. He can sympathize, not feeling so hot himself lately. On the table between them is the baby bundled up in its portable car seat, and she clutches at his tie, gapes up at his broken face. Chances are she doesn't understand a lick of English yet, but that doesn't stop him from explaining, in a forced faux cheery voice, how her daddy is giving him an ulcer.

When she breaks the news about her DEA brother-in-law, it takes a moment for it to really hit him. Even trying to envision a life without ASAC Schrader crawling up their asses is nearly impossible. Saul wasn't exactly the guy's number one fan, but he murmurs his condolences, is about to reach out to comfort her before something changes his mind. Her eyes are wet and staring down at the table, like she's seeing through it at something else. Maybe she's daydreaming about how differently things would've turned out, had the cancer returned in time to ravage her husband's body, their problems fading with the metastasis of each cell.

A realization comes to Saul, harsh and unbidden like a slap, that they have no clue of Walt's whereabouts, or Pinkman's for that matter. Needless to say, it doesn't do much to ease the constant paranoia twisting in his gut.

"At least we can relax now," he says, wiping his greasy fingers off with the paper wrapper. He laughs, and it comes out dry and humorless. "There's gotta be some kind of quota for disaster. I mean, what else can go wrong, huh?"

Skyler tells him to stop talking. She tears off a piece of her burger, and Walt's former hostages chew together in silence. Even though he has a feeling they probably wouldn't flag as matches on eHarmony or anything like that, wouldn't have even crossed paths under normal circumstances, it doesn't explain the last three months- stolen afternoons at the Motel 6, or any other window of time when Walt was too busy cooking blue to notice what his better half was doing. It doesn't explain why they're sitting here now, pretending that this isn't the last time they're ever going to see each other.

When you're drowning, Saul figures, you're willing to grab onto pretty much anything to get your head above water.

If he bites the bullet and stays in Albuquerque, he'll likely either wind up in a body bag, or serving a maximum sentence as somebody's prison wife, and believe it or not but those aren't options he's too keen on exploring. Because for Saul, the instinct of self-preservation has always trumped everything else, and with that comes a knot of hard choices. It means leaving behind holding and being held by a woman who isn't his; her hair on his face, her lips skimming against his ear. The sharp and unapologetic way she sees through his bullshit. The reluctant twitch at the corner of Skyler's mouth, against her better judgement, whenever he makes some smart ass remark.

The night she sliced her finger cleaning up a broken wine glass, and he'd walked in to find her standing there at the sink, watching it bleed. And then how he'd panicked and pressed a dish cloth against her hand, her eyes glassy as marbles, gone.

The smell of cigarette smoke in the folds of her clothes.

"He would take three more," Saul tells her abruptly, low and serious. A last ditch effort to make her understand. It's the same tone he uses when he makes plea bargains for clients he already knows are shit out of luck. "The guy I know," he adds for unnecessary clarification, because this isn't anything they haven't already discussed before. "It's not too late, for you to get out of this..."

He's all too aware of the fact that Skyler is a package-deal, and struggles to picture the four of them on the run together, playing house- pancakes on Sundays, et cetera- all that domestic crap that never usually crosses his mind. Maybe his contact would knock off a couple thou for the tyke, give them a discount. Somehow though, he doubts that boy of hers would jump at the chance to wipe his slate clean at seventeen. Skyler would also never desert the grieving, widowed sister, even if they probably won't be on speaking terms after this. That sounds too much like something he would do; like packing his bags and leaving someone to take the fall for the Devil.

"You made your choice," she says, words pragmatic and matter-of-fact, not a trace of bitterness or resentment in them; Saul still decides that this conversation hasn't gone at all the way he wanted it to. He looks at the faint laugh lines around her eyes, and thinks that over the course of the past year, something hasn't been taken from her so much as it's been scraped out. She looks at him steadily. "But I don't have one."

He grasps her hand almost without realizing it, his mouth feeling tight. It's a trifle embarrassing, acting like a clingy teenaged girl, but she lets him hold it for a while and he focuses on that, until there's only orange dusk and her perfume and the warmth of her palm against his own.

"Take care, Saul."

She lets him go and adjusts the strap of her purse on one shoulder, tucking a stray piece of hair behind her ear- womanly gestures that make his chest ache now for some reason. She loads the baby into the backseat of her car and his mouth opens in an automatic reflex, to call after her. But for once in his life, he can't think of anything to say.

When she drives away, the placating part of Saul assures himself that Skyler, the White clan, will be just fine, that this'll all blow over eventually- makes himself believe it because he has to. Pushing himself up from the table, he ends up dumping the rest of their meals in the trash, and something tells him he won't be jonesing for fast food for a while. It's always too hot anyway, too salty. And you're only hungrier when it's gone.


End file.
